Missionary Monday - We Got Our Stickers
Email from September 13th...
Wednesday we had an earthquake drill in the afternoon, they make you go out to these green circles in the middle of the streets since there's no buildings tall enough to fall on you in the street haha.
Thursday night at 11:40 I was awakened by the same earthquake siren, it sounded kinda like the tornado sirens in the Midwest. I had been asleep for over an hour so I was super confused, Elder Bretzing who is another Elder in our room was looking out the window, he said a bunch of missionaries were walking out to the circles in their pajamas, elder Bretzing asked if I thought we should go out there and I said "yeah for sure!" and then rolled over and fell back asleep right away, cause I couldn't feel anything. I really thought it was a false alarm or something, at the time it seemed more likely that it was a malfunction than an actual earthquake, cause why would an earthquake happen at night? Anyways the next morning I woke up and everyone was talking about the earthquake and I thought it was a joke until our teacher looked it up and said there was an 8.0 earthquake, here in Mexico city it was only 4.7 that must not be that bad cause I never felt it but people said the doors were making noise cause the door frames were shaking so maybe I was asleep for the worst of it. If another one happens just assume I didn't make it, I'm on the top bunk and will ignore the alarm. Just kidding.
Saturday there was a level 3 hurricane coming straight for us, according to CNN, we were supposed to get 10 inches of rain in an hour or two, I was pretty excited, I've always wanted to experience a mild natural disaster like that. But as the day went on the hurricane had dispersed once it got to land, it didn't even rain. So that was a bummer. It totally would have destroyed this city though, so it's probably good that it didn't happen. We had a speech assessment in "TALL" (technology assisted language learning) we have an hour of tall every day but the speech assessment was different, there were 11 different things that I had to talk about into a microphone, not sure what the point of it was, they said they send the recordings to Provo. It was weird.
Sunday in priesthood we watched an AWESOME devotional by Elder Holland, called "feed my sheep" (Mom, I think it would be perfect to show in mission prep, it will help everyone understand the importance of missionary work) it covered a lot of topics but it was by far my favorite lesson here so far. They ended up showing it again for the afternoon devotional haha, but it was just as good the second time.
On Monday we got our stickers, they are a pretty big deal. They basically show everyone we get to leave soon and they don't. Other than that they haven't really told us the significance of the stickers. We also got a new teacher for the mornings, hermano vilencia. He's pretty cool, I don't know a ton about him yet.
Yesterday was kind of slow, I have started my spending spree at the tienda, I had over 400 pesos on my account cause I haven't spent hardly any from week to week, it added up pretty nice. Everything is super cheap in there, so I have a ton of skittles, Twix, and Mexican candy that should last me a month or two in D.C. I also got a mini Spanish preach my gospel and hymn book. I have like a hundred pesos left, I can't decide whether to get a nice poncho or a ccm t-shirt... The devotional was cool. They had the first counselor in the México city mission speak. He had a translator. But he gave half of the talk in English and the translator translated to Spanish, then the other half in Spanish and the translator translated to English, that was weird. But his message was good. Last night we had to pack all of our stuff for when we weigh our bags today at 3. Can't wait to unpack it right after, then pack it again on Monday.
Today will probably consist of a lot of basketball, studying, and travel meetings. Crazy that in a week or two I'll have real missionary things to write about instead of just stuff that happens here in the mtc.
As far as pictures go, nothing worth taking a picture of really happened... It's been getting colder and colder each day, which I never would have guessed since its Mexico... I like it though. And then there's my sorta empty closet.
Thursday night at 11:40 I was awakened by the same earthquake siren, it sounded kinda like the tornado sirens in the Midwest. I had been asleep for over an hour so I was super confused, Elder Bretzing who is another Elder in our room was looking out the window, he said a bunch of missionaries were walking out to the circles in their pajamas, elder Bretzing asked if I thought we should go out there and I said "yeah for sure!" and then rolled over and fell back asleep right away, cause I couldn't feel anything. I really thought it was a false alarm or something, at the time it seemed more likely that it was a malfunction than an actual earthquake, cause why would an earthquake happen at night? Anyways the next morning I woke up and everyone was talking about the earthquake and I thought it was a joke until our teacher looked it up and said there was an 8.0 earthquake, here in Mexico city it was only 4.7 that must not be that bad cause I never felt it but people said the doors were making noise cause the door frames were shaking so maybe I was asleep for the worst of it. If another one happens just assume I didn't make it, I'm on the top bunk and will ignore the alarm. Just kidding.
Saturday there was a level 3 hurricane coming straight for us, according to CNN, we were supposed to get 10 inches of rain in an hour or two, I was pretty excited, I've always wanted to experience a mild natural disaster like that. But as the day went on the hurricane had dispersed once it got to land, it didn't even rain. So that was a bummer. It totally would have destroyed this city though, so it's probably good that it didn't happen. We had a speech assessment in "TALL" (technology assisted language learning) we have an hour of tall every day but the speech assessment was different, there were 11 different things that I had to talk about into a microphone, not sure what the point of it was, they said they send the recordings to Provo. It was weird.
Sunday in priesthood we watched an AWESOME devotional by Elder Holland, called "feed my sheep" (Mom, I think it would be perfect to show in mission prep, it will help everyone understand the importance of missionary work) it covered a lot of topics but it was by far my favorite lesson here so far. They ended up showing it again for the afternoon devotional haha, but it was just as good the second time.
On Monday we got our stickers, they are a pretty big deal. They basically show everyone we get to leave soon and they don't. Other than that they haven't really told us the significance of the stickers. We also got a new teacher for the mornings, hermano vilencia. He's pretty cool, I don't know a ton about him yet.
Yesterday was kind of slow, I have started my spending spree at the tienda, I had over 400 pesos on my account cause I haven't spent hardly any from week to week, it added up pretty nice. Everything is super cheap in there, so I have a ton of skittles, Twix, and Mexican candy that should last me a month or two in D.C. I also got a mini Spanish preach my gospel and hymn book. I have like a hundred pesos left, I can't decide whether to get a nice poncho or a ccm t-shirt... The devotional was cool. They had the first counselor in the México city mission speak. He had a translator. But he gave half of the talk in English and the translator translated to Spanish, then the other half in Spanish and the translator translated to English, that was weird. But his message was good. Last night we had to pack all of our stuff for when we weigh our bags today at 3. Can't wait to unpack it right after, then pack it again on Monday.
Today will probably consist of a lot of basketball, studying, and travel meetings. Crazy that in a week or two I'll have real missionary things to write about instead of just stuff that happens here in the mtc.
As far as pictures go, nothing worth taking a picture of really happened... It's been getting colder and colder each day, which I never would have guessed since its Mexico... I like it though. And then there's my sorta empty closet.
Elder Beck
